Unknown Magnuson Park diver critical - Lake Washington, Washington state
- Thread starter DandyDon
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Matt McCauley
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Condolences to Jonathan Saenz's friends and family and kudos to the NOAA guys who were out on the lake, saw him floating, took decisive action, and tried their best to save him.
I'm glad people are waiting for the remaining facts to come out before speculating about what happened. I remember well back in '90 the US Navy had Reserve Mobile Diving Salvage Unit One's Detachment 522, out of Everett, down at the south end of the lake diving on the Martin "Mariner" PBM-5 in 70-feet of water trying to recover the airplane (Much to my disappointment at the time!). As I recall, they were diving surface supplied, I think using Kirby-Morgan bandmasks, and lost a man in the water, also relatively young, 37, and everybody in the media and attention-grabbing politicians assumed it was a diving mishap, ie equipment failure, entanglement, something along those lines, and a 'Navy planes in the lake are dangerous' false narrative was starting to take hold.
Turns out, the poor guy had a pre-existing heart condition. They were working airlifts, obviously, because they were going to need to move TONS of that sticky mud off the wings and engine nacelles, etc., and the diver simply had a heart attack of some sort while he happened to be diving, it was not a diving accident per se. The 'Navy planes in the lake are dangerous' noise mostly went away as well.
I'm sure we are all curious to learn what happened in Saenz's case, whether a medical problem while diving or a gear malfunction or other diving-related issue, but I'm glad that in this case media et al are being more responsible and waiting for facts, avoiding the irresponsible, hyperbolic speculation we saw back in '90.
(The Navy abandoned that salvage attempt after the fatal incident, but went back and tried again in '96, managing to succeed only in tearing off the entire tail section. The Navy divers attached the grates blocking entry into the fuselage after they messed the plane up, before that we used to be able penetrate it, usually enter/exit between the large cargo doors at the waist to the smaller door up near the nose. Inside it has a galley, bunks, it was like a big flying RV! To get to the flight deck (cockpit, pilot/co-pilot seats) you had to take off your tank [a single Luxfer alum 80'] and slide down through a narrow hatch [because the PBM is inverted the "down" was originally UP to the flight deck]. You could see the yokes and instruments, etc., and it was really cool for about a second before it silted up and you couldn't see anything. Then you had to feel your way out and pull your tank through behind you, then exit the fuselage. Back then, c.1982, most sporties were using stab jackets, but we used the old SeaQuest back mount BCs because we wanted the smaller profiles to do crazy crap like the above, so, happily, it did not surprise me at all when years later "Tech Diving" emerged as a named thing and back mount BC's were revived and improved by several gear manufacturers. [Attached pic is from '81, me in warm water, Cayman, with my, essencially, Gen I backmount "wing" BC. Other antiques include early vented fins, Waterlung 707s, AMF-Voit reg, Ikelite housed 35mm film SLR and flash, Princton Techtonics bottom timer and plastic PADI tables . . . because it was the pre-dive computer-era]).
I'm glad people are waiting for the remaining facts to come out before speculating about what happened. I remember well back in '90 the US Navy had Reserve Mobile Diving Salvage Unit One's Detachment 522, out of Everett, down at the south end of the lake diving on the Martin "Mariner" PBM-5 in 70-feet of water trying to recover the airplane (Much to my disappointment at the time!). As I recall, they were diving surface supplied, I think using Kirby-Morgan bandmasks, and lost a man in the water, also relatively young, 37, and everybody in the media and attention-grabbing politicians assumed it was a diving mishap, ie equipment failure, entanglement, something along those lines, and a 'Navy planes in the lake are dangerous' false narrative was starting to take hold.
Turns out, the poor guy had a pre-existing heart condition. They were working airlifts, obviously, because they were going to need to move TONS of that sticky mud off the wings and engine nacelles, etc., and the diver simply had a heart attack of some sort while he happened to be diving, it was not a diving accident per se. The 'Navy planes in the lake are dangerous' noise mostly went away as well.
I'm sure we are all curious to learn what happened in Saenz's case, whether a medical problem while diving or a gear malfunction or other diving-related issue, but I'm glad that in this case media et al are being more responsible and waiting for facts, avoiding the irresponsible, hyperbolic speculation we saw back in '90.
(The Navy abandoned that salvage attempt after the fatal incident, but went back and tried again in '96, managing to succeed only in tearing off the entire tail section. The Navy divers attached the grates blocking entry into the fuselage after they messed the plane up, before that we used to be able penetrate it, usually enter/exit between the large cargo doors at the waist to the smaller door up near the nose. Inside it has a galley, bunks, it was like a big flying RV! To get to the flight deck (cockpit, pilot/co-pilot seats) you had to take off your tank [a single Luxfer alum 80'] and slide down through a narrow hatch [because the PBM is inverted the "down" was originally UP to the flight deck]. You could see the yokes and instruments, etc., and it was really cool for about a second before it silted up and you couldn't see anything. Then you had to feel your way out and pull your tank through behind you, then exit the fuselage. Back then, c.1982, most sporties were using stab jackets, but we used the old SeaQuest back mount BCs because we wanted the smaller profiles to do crazy crap like the above, so, happily, it did not surprise me at all when years later "Tech Diving" emerged as a named thing and back mount BC's were revived and improved by several gear manufacturers. [Attached pic is from '81, me in warm water, Cayman, with my, essencially, Gen I backmount "wing" BC. Other antiques include early vented fins, Waterlung 707s, AMF-Voit reg, Ikelite housed 35mm film SLR and flash, Princton Techtonics bottom timer and plastic PADI tables . . . because it was the pre-dive computer-era]).
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